‘You’re a genius!’, ‘Yes, that’s true’, people were shouting before Moonface’s set at the FYF fest. The band was playing on the main stage early in the afternoon, someone was sprinkling lots of water to cool down the crowd, and I was just trying to protect my iPhone and camera. I was hesitating between staying and checking other acts on the three other stages, but I had to stay after these declarations.
I didn’t know anything about this project of multi-instrumentalist Canadian Spencer Krug, who is best known for being in a multitude of other bands such as Wolf Parade, Sunset Rubdown, Frog Eyes, Swan Lake, Fifths of Seven…. Something I cannot comprehend as I would be hardly able to focus on one single project. In any case, Moonface's music sounded great and grandiose, and the songs built by the five musicians were some epic and adventurous numbers, which were able to surprise me at each detour of their sophisticated constructions.
There were long installments of synth and electronic beats shimmering and searching for the right groove, like crazy fireflies slowly lightening up, just before the warmth of the vocal harmonies would kick up. There were tribal exotic drums mixed with lots of windy synth that could even go sidereal, and a lot of diversity in the songs which could go into repetitive Krautrock-y whirpools. I would say that the result was truly experimental, artsy, dense and dark, but without losing touch with its humanity. A few songs were doing a certain bombastic built up but were smart enough to never really burst like a U2 song would do it. Anyone may have heard about everything in this music, but very curiously the idea of Indian Pow Wow (if they were using synth) and… Sigur Ros crossed my mind at one point,… it was that melancholic at times. Moonface’s last and third album ‘Heartbreaking Bravery’ is in fact a collaboration with Finnish post-rock group Siinai who was playing with him at the FYF fest.
‘We have never played in LA before, it’s beautiful’, said Krug at one point, he was talking kindling to the crowd while his singing voice was deeply emotional, building sadness throughout these complicated eerie and puzzling compositions, and keeping up with the operatic bombast level. One of the other musicians was bent over the synth most of the time, slowly head banging, while Spencer Krug took a book and strangely read/sang it during the last song. To be honest, I could talk about their dramatic music much longer without being satisfied of any description, I don’t know if it was genius, but the crowd reaction was telling more than anything I could have said. 